


Stir

by EA_Lakambini



Series: Orbital Resonance: GOC2020 [11]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Crowley Has Issues (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley thinks either too little or too much when he's drunk, Drinking, Good Omens Celebration 2020, In this one he thinks too much, Introspection, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Pining, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EA_Lakambini/pseuds/EA_Lakambini
Summary: On certain nights, when it is too late to be evening and too early to be morning, Crowley mixes himself a drink.EDIT: Now with art!
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Orbital Resonance: GOC2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725724
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Good Omens Celebration





	Stir

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: Now with art by the immensely talented Y'lqar! He did an absolutely amazing job capturing the depth and intensity of emotion in the seemingly simple scene. Check out more of his work [here](https://www.instagram.com/ylqart/).
> 
> Dipping back into angst, just to keep things slightly balanced (?)  
> This happens after the bus scene.
> 
> Prompt: old fashioned.

On certain nights, when it is too late to be evening and too early to be morning, Crowley mixes himself a drink.

While he usually would go straight for the hard stuff, he sometimes enjoys the process of mixing a cocktail (and he was partially responsible for inventing the word for it, so he might as well try it out now and then). And while he mixes, he thinks.

Tonight is one of those nights. Tonight, when it is too late for the Apocalypse to happen and it is too early to say that they are safe. Tonight, Crowley is mixing an old fashioned, and he is thinking of Aziraphale.  
  


*~*~*~*~*  
  


Set out the rocks glass. Hard, clear, cold. It will hold every ingredient involved in this drink tonight. Not just the alcohol, but also the air that the liquid displaces, the silence broken by the stirring. A world contained within, someone calling the shots; the only one knowing where this will all lead.

Drop one sugar cube into the glass. Sweet, firm, perfectly made, seemingly unyielding. The clatter of the sugar cube against the glass is loud and echoing. Crowley can always hear Aziraphale. He curates their conversations in his mind, the same way the angel collects first editions (carefully, and for no one but himself). He hears in the nuances what Aziraphale does not say: the hesitation, the fondness, the anger, the disbelief, the contentment. (There is now a relatively new addition; he cannot put an adjective to it just yet, so for tonight, he refers to it only as _we-can’t-give-up-now._ ) Words between them are safe; they cannot be grasped, and they leave no visible trace. He leaves no traces of himself on Aziraphale; the angel is unyielding, he of cream-colored perfection and heavenly grace. He cannot claim the same for himself, as he revisits their conversations and let them break on him like waves on a cliff, carving into rock, leading everywhere and nowhere.

Soak the sugar cube in a few dashes of angostura bitters. Plants of the earth, steeped in alcohol. Saturating the sugar, beginning to break down its hard edges. Crowley fears that his presence in Aziraphale’s life will ruin the angel, possibly forever. It is why he is afraid to reach out, to touch; his bitterness is caustic, corrosive. He does not create – that part of his story is long over and done – he only destroys.

Muddle it together. Crush it firmly until the sugar and bitters are one. Crowley tries to blame it on circumstance. They are the only immortal beings stationed on earth, after all. The events of humanity force them together, first on opposite sides and then – he doesn’t know how it happens, hardly notices it happening until it something he can no longer deny – on a side that neither of them can acknowledge. And despite his best efforts, he cannot help but be drawn to Aziraphale. Pulled into the orbit of this sweet-voiced one, with hair brighter than sunlight and eyes brighter than galaxies. The centuries apart had turned to decades and then to mere years. His days slowly had been incorporated with the angel, with his prim voice and his mild laughter and his strange mannerisms. For better or for worse, they share this assignment, this earth, and this affection and protectiveness for the humans that inhabit it. They share each other.

Pour out the rye whiskey. Amber like the blood of trees, like sunlight through smoke, like serpentine eyes. And now - stir. Let the sugar dissolve in the alcohols until it indiscernible. Stirred, not shaken, not in the way that is rough or sudden, strange and unwanted. (One could argue that at least one player in this story wanted this, perhaps.) The unrelenting rush of years have transformed them both. From enemies to acquaintances to friends, almost. The alcohol has changed them – much of their meetings over the decades were punctuated with the sharing of this libation – and in its intoxication Crowley can almost let himself believe that he and Aziraphale are equals, with no gaping chasm of heaven and hell between, at least in that moment when sharing a bottle. (He does not think of the word _belong_.)

One large cube of ice. Adding water to the spirit, changing it forever, no turning back. Chilling the heat of the whiskey. Whatever they had together, Crowley knows, it was his request for holy water that changed everything. Emphasized how far apart Aziraphale was from him, how fundamentally different. How Aziraphale would always belong to Heaven. Despite all they had shared together – rain and bloodshed, fog and wine, life and death and even a plate of oysters in Rome – they could not share the possibility of protecting each other once their sides came to claim their respective spoils.

Slice the peels off the orange. The knife cuts swiftly, cleanly through. Crowley knows how easily Aziraphale can destroy him. Not even with holy water or with divine wrath, but simply with a choice. The moment the angel turned him away, rejected him not once but twice in a day – that was when Crowley learned how deeply Aziraphale could cut him. Deeper than knives or flaming swords, right through to the core of him, feeling like he is bleeding out onto the bandstand floor.

Twist the citrus peels, rub them round the rim. Take a slice of the peel, squeeze in front of a flame of conjured hellfire from a thin finger. Let the oils ignite, burst aflame in an explosion of fragrant light. Crowley has learned of a pain greater than Falling. That pain was loss, was absence, was the nothing that Aziraphale had left behind when he disappeared in a flash of heavenly luminosity, leaving Crowley to burn in the ruins of a bookshop, in a place that had once been of wine and words and possibility.

Drop the peels into the glass. Stir one more time. Just one more time. Let it all come together, come what may. He is still here, Aziraphale is still here; they are still alive, and they still have one more chance to survive. And so – stir. Do not shake. Let the bitterness of him, all the heat and sharpness and _wrong_ , somehow come together with the sweetness that is Aziraphale, and become something transformed anew, in this brave new world that lived through an ending that wasn’t. It isn’t love – he could never deserve that – but it can be something he can live for. Something to get through the rest of eternity. Something from their thousands of years together, bitter and sweet and hot and cold and all of it so precious to him. Let it be enough.  
  


*~*~*~*~*  
  


Crowley takes the drink and walks from the kitchen, back to the living room. Aziraphale is there. Aziraphale lives. The angel is seated, gazing at the walls, with thoughts a million miles away from Crowley.

Crowley looks at him, looks at himself looking at him. Aziraphale is calm, still and silent; he is shaken, but he does not stir.

Crowley takes a sip, and tries to let the memories burn.

**Author's Note:**

> I think that was just me projecting myself on Crowley, because I am very much an overthinker.  
> Also, I realize that there may be people questioning his methods of preparing an Old Fashioned; the way I wrote it describes the way I personally prepare the drink, so I may be wrong.
> 
> Thanks for dropping by!


End file.
